Moore has received quite a lot of support from across the nation. Thousands have shown up to hear him speak about his ideas and his legal battles. Hundreds of thousands have signed petitions supporting him. On March 5, 1997, the US House of Representatives voted 295-125 to support Moore and his desire to post the Ten Commandments in his court room. Alabama Governor Fob James promised to send out the National Guard and state troopers rather than see the display come down — a promise very reminiscent of past promises by governors to use the National Guard and police to keep black students out of white schools.
When Roy Moore was elected to the state Supreme Court, that victory could be attributed in large part to his fame and popularity over his display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. He campaigned as the “Ten Commandments Judge” and he promised to help restore God and Christianity to American law and government. Clearly, Moore can count on a great deal of support from citizens of Alabama.
Curiously, despite his public proclamation of the importance of the Ten Commandments, that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from ignoring them when it has been convenient. In 1999, he was investigated for ethics violations over the possibility of having benefited financially from the more than $100,000 which has been raised by his legal defense fund — a violation for which he could have faced 20 years in prison. Moore attacked the Alabama Ethics Commission as trying to “stop the message about God.”
In March of 2000, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission concluded that then Circuit Court Judge Roy Moore indeed violated judicial standards, but it also ruled that no disciplinary action was necessary and that Moore should be more careful in the future.
Less than two weeks after Moore installed the Ten Commandments monument at the Alabama Supreme Court, religious extremists from another religious tradition launched the most destructive terrorist attack in history on the United States, killing thousands in New York City and Washington, D.C. — in part, because of their belief that the American government refuses to recognize the sovereignty of God as they understand it, because the American government does not adhere to morality as they understand it, and because America is too secular for them.
With this as context, Associate Justice Douglas Johnstone, one of Moore's colleagues on the AlabamaÕs highest court, had very appropriate words about the monument:
- Courts should confine themselves to deciding their cases according to established law. I shun symbolic controversies because I think time and effort are better spent in tangible service rather than symbolic gesture. However, while I believe in God, I oppose the movement to govern in the name of God. People who govern in the name of God attribute their own personal preferences to God and therefore recognize no limits in imposing those preferences on other people.
Others have also expressed their disagreement with Moore — especially when it came to his late-night shenanigans in installing the Ten Commandments memorial after everyone had left the building and without consulting his colleagues. Newspapers all over Alabama condemned his actions, and the Tuscaloosa News said that he had turned the court into a “three-ring circus.”
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